Quirky
by Mathias Kekse
Summary: They all have special abilities - and that's normal


**Edward Elric**

When Ed was three, it was nearly impossible to remove him from the walls.

An early bloomer as far as quirks went, as soon as the little boy realized certain parts of him had a habit of sticking to surfaces, he took every chance he had to test it out. As far as his parents could tell, it was mostly his hands, feet, elbows, and knees that stuck to things. More than once they'd find him hanging from the ceiling. He was a menace when it came to hiding things in cupboards.

After Ed lost his arm and leg, not only was it hard to climb a ninety-degree angle with only two limbs, but the automail limbs almost made it even harder. But Ed had already accepted that because of the grave error he had made, he had lost many important things to him. As long as he got Al's body back, he would be able to live without absolutely anything that had been taken from him.

After the promise day, when he got his other arm back, it took him a sad amount of time to realize that this meant he'd be able to use his quirk again. It was only after Winry had come at him with a wrench about his still-automail leg that he tried to scurry up the wall to get away. And he was almost surprised when both of his hands found purchase on the wall.

(Shortly after he still got nailed in the head with the wrench. It would seem no matter where he'd climb, Winry's quirk of accurate throw always won.)

 **Alphonse Elric**

Alphonse didn't learn about his quirk until Trisha was nearly dead.

The two of them had made her a flower crown, a common thing in those terrible days, and Trisha had reached to take it from Ed, to touch a finger to them and use her quirk on the rings, but she was struggling and both boys hated to see her struggle. Alphonse had grabbed it to put on her head, but as his hands made contact with it there was a brief flash and the crown gained a shininess to it, as if it were covered in a thin layer of glass.

"Oh, Al, your quirk," Trisha had smiled sadly, tiredly, as Alphonse put the crown upon her head with shaking hands. "You inherited it from me."

Stasis, Trisha's - and now Alphonse's - quirk, was a strange thing. A single touch to an item, and it would stop. It would be frozen where it was. A flower would never wilt, a ball would stay frozen in the air until somebody moved it. After that day, Al tried time and again to do just that with their mother. But not only was his control over his quirk not good enough, but Trisha herself didn't want Al to do that to her. She'd placed a hand on his cheek, wiping away a tear as he failed to save her once again, and told him that she didn't want him to ever use stasis on a human being.

After Trisha died, Alphonse practiced stasis often, and had begun to get quite good at it - until they attempted human transmutation. With his body he lost his quirk.

Both of the boys were essentially quirkless.

 **Roy Mustang**

Roy Mustang liked having an upper hand. A good way to secure one was to surprise people.

This was why Roy had become so devoted to flame alchemy. He was determined to master it, to utilize it, for that to be his area of expertise so that people would be surprised when he actually used his quirk. At first, flame alchemy was to be the secondary ability of his, though the one the public would see more. And yet, as time went on and he went to Ishval and fought in battle after battle, he steadily found that his first reaction to unsettling things was to ready his fingers to snap instead of whistling.

Eventually, Roy seemed to nearly forget he had a quirk at all. A wet glove meant he was down for the count. The transmutation circle being broken meant that he'd have to draw a new one or rely on Riza for a moment.

But on some nights, when he couldn't sleep because the nightmares were too bad, he'd sit by the window and whistle a soft, meaningless tune as pictures of frost would curl on the glass.

(He'd wonder if burning in an inferno was a better death than freezing in a glacier for the Ishvalans.)

 **Riza Hawkeye**

Many people would try and guess at her quirk.

Zoom vision, never-failing aim, perhaps the ability to make a never-ending supply of guns or ammo.

Riza would let them guess until they were out of breath and their faces were blue, but would never tell. There was only one person alive she'd willingly given the information to, and she'd like to keep it that way.

After her team was split up all across Amestris, she found herself using it more than ever.

Jean Havoc: alive, safe

Roy Mustang: alive, safe

Heymans Breda: alive, in danger

Kain Fuery: alive, in peril

Vaton Falman: alive, safe

She took comfort in them, in the alives that passed through her mind at the thought of their names, how she had the urge to turn in one direction or another, the direction in which they lied, ready to act when the time came again. Riza could still see in her mind their eyes when she had first looked into them and decided she would add them to those she tracked.

Riza screamed when on the Promise Day, Roy's presence winked out completely. Not dead, but gone as if he had never existed.

 **Jean Havoc**

His was told his entire life that, with a quirk like his, he was bound to join the military.

Jean had often replied that, which a country based so much on military, so would most other people in the classroom.

Nonetheless, this didn't mean that they were wrong. A quirk like 'weapon touch' wasn't meant for a chef. So after his schooling Jean followed his fate and picked up his first pistol. He'd held a rifle before, the reason he'd ever found out about his quirk, but the pistol was the second time he'd felt his quirk in action. The blueprints of the weapon filled his mind as his hand shifted its position on the gun into the correct hold.

His superiors seemed to find this quirk interesting, even 'fun' as they passed him guns and had him touch tanks just to see if he'd be able to drive them better than those trained to do so. However, a quirk only got you so far rank-wise, and so while he was viewed as interesting he wasn't viewed as worthwhile, because he could hold a gun but practiced marksmen could do that too, and they often shot more accurate than him.

Mustang saw Jean as a person, and he was one of the first since he'd joined the military to do so (Breda being the first). He was Jean's worth, and so Jean joined the man in his crazy goal to be Fuhrer. He seemed practically over joyed when Jean touched his glove and didn't understand how to use the circle on the back.

After Jean's spinal cord was damaged, he'd hold the items in the general store grimly. With a quirk like his, he was meant to be in the military.

(When Jean picked up the phone around the time of the Promised Day and had an intimate knowledge of it, he'd grinned. Honestly, anything could be a weapon in the right hands.)

 **Heymans Breda**

Like Havoc, Breda's quirk was often the first and only thing they knew about him.

His quirk was used to define him, and he was essentially thrown into the military. He'd sigh as others remarked that he was smarter than he looked, smarter than a quirk like his let on. One would think, in this day and age, people would realize than quirks weren't everything. They were like an eye or an ear or an arm. Part of somebody, but everybody had them so that didn't really make them very interesting.

Of course, it wasn't like Breda didn't like to use his quirk. How nice it was, to have somebody try and punch him only to find their fist come in contact with the suddenly stoney surface of that was his skin.

 **Vato Falman**

Falman often got compliments on his quirk.

How amazing, the amount of information he was able to retain. It was one of the best uses of a memory quirk they'd seen. He put several others to shame with his ability.

And he'd smile, and he'd thank them.

Because it wasn't their fault that they hadn't been told he didn't have a quirk.

Falman was born with an amazing memory, but that memory was very much not a quirk. Not that that made much of a difference in Central. There, intelligence was important as the fighting was more intellectual than physical in some fields. And that was where Mustang had utilized him.

But then he got shipped off to Briggs.

Briggs, the hardest, coldest place in all of Amestris where only the strong survive. Falman thought that, surely, without a quirk he'd be looked down upon. Only the best of the best - and those who weren't meant to live long - got sent down the the giant wall.

But when Falman actually got there, he found that quirks weren't important to the Briggs men. Many had quirks that didn't 'suit' military or weren't meant for the climate they currently resided in, but that didn't stop them from being there.

Still, it was only after Falman's first run-in with Buccaneer that he realized he really didn't have anything to worry about. The man had asked about his quirk, and Falman had answered lamely that he didn't have one and would probably be better somewhere else. The man had laughed, a big hearty laugh, and replied that such a thing had never stopped him from defending the border.

 **Kain Fuery**

Fuery was on the front lines of a war. He didn't have time to use his quirk.

And yet he made time.

At night, when he has actually in a camp and not in the trenches, he would close his eyes. Even just that was dangerous when the enemy may attack at any given moment, but he still would. And then he would stop paying attention to his surroundings. And he'd listen. He'd strain his ears until the sound of snores was a distant memory, until the gunshots of those still fighting faded into the distance. At some point, he'd only been able to reach the edge of camps. Then he reached the towns miles away. Night after night, he'd sacrifice time he could be resting and sleeping to focusing, using his quirk more than he ever had as he heard the trains rumbling across the tracks.

He'd sobbed for hours when he realized the scratching he was hearing was Mustang's pen on paper after somebody came in and addressed him as such. He'd smiled sadly as he heard Havoc making his way around his general store in his wheelchair, answering the phone with a deep sigh. He'd laughed with Vato as the Briggs men gathered around for a drink.

And he was the first to find out what Mustang was planning and abandoned his position long before the message reached him.

 **Olivier Armstrong**

Quirks were useful in their own right, but Olivier had never understood why people always put so much stock into them.

What use was a quirk if the man who held it had no spine?

Only those who survived could belong in Briggs, and no fancy quirks could save you forever from the harsh climate. So while to some being sent to Briggs was a sign of your career ending, others took to it with vigor. For once their position wasn't low because they were able to talk to animals as compared to the man who could create minature explosions. Here, they had a chance to be a person and not a quirk to be used by the military.

Olivier was confident enough in herself to admit that such an system was, possibly, influenced the slightest by her own quirk.

Like everything else about the Armstrong's, it had been passed through them for generations. Every offspring of the family had the same quirk, regardless of whatever quirk their spouse had.

Every Armstrong could create sparkles.

Of all the siblings, Alex utilized it the most, usually to held show off his muscles. The quirk could be used as a distraction, enough sparkles could blind people, and with enough concentration the sparkles were even solid and could do some damage.

Olivier hadn't actively used her quirk in years.

(though she'd be lying if the said she didn't use it on occasion when he hair was falling just right.)

 **Miles**

Miles, like Olivier, had a family quirk.

He got his from his mother, who got it from her father, who got it from his father.

He was often told he'd be of more use in the desert, or perhaps even working under Mustang.

Miles never listened. Briggs was where he belonged.

To Hell with his burn-proof quirk.

 **Ling Yao**

There was an actual reason for Ling's squinty-eyed-ness.

Sure, there was the fact that he was Xingese so it was actual a part of his facial expression. But it also hurt to open his eyes in broad daylight.

In the night, now that was his time to shine.

He'd open his eyes up more than ever, and take in the brilliant colors of the world. How often he'd snuck around the Yao clan territory in the twilight hours, looking over her people when his sight was at its peak, the shadows far more lit up to him than they were to anybody else.

Greed, for whatever reason, didn't seem able to use Ling's night-vision quirk, which worked out well for the prince, as it meant he got a little bit more time to control his body.

Sometimes, Ling thought that Lanfan was a little - dare he say it - jealous of his quirk. She was his bodyguard, and yet he could move through the shadows with more sureness than she. Of course, Lanfan had always felt insecure quirk-wise - being the quirkless child in a family with a history amazing quirks would do that to somebody.

But Ling would have nobody else protecting him. He'd never choose anybody else to be by his side. And just as she would give her life for Ling, Ling relished the not-so-secret fact that he would do the same for her in a heartbeat.

 **Mei Chang**

In all honesty, Mei wasn't really sure she had a quirk.

One of the reasons that the Change family was so looked down upon was because they were overrun with quirkless individuals. Mei had never been bothered by this fact, but it did put some confusion to whether or not she had one.

But eventually she decided that yes, she must have one. After all, nobody ever seemed to talk about the colors that surrounded people. So that must've been her quirk.

She'd heard the word aura a long time ago, and had decided that that must've been it. She was seeing people's aura's. Which, again, put into question whether or not seeing aura's was considered a quirk or just an ability. And after years and years of debating this fact over, she'd decided that really it didn't matter, and if anybody cared then they weren't worth it.

When Mei had first met Alphonse, she had been a bit confused. How could one's aura stem entirely from a place on their neck? And she'd been even more confused upon meeting Ling. Ling of the Yao clan, her enemy in many ways. How could he have such a nice aura?

 **Scar**

Scar's quirk was useful for soothing others.

That's what he had been told years ago.

To see what haunts people, what good use it could be put to.

Scar had laughed at the ridiculousness of such a statement years later.

It was so easy to spot a State Alchemist, especially those who had severed in the Ishval Massacre. They were always surrounded by the hauntings of those they had murdered out there, those they had mowed down without any regard to their lives.

The Flame Alchemist walked with burned memories of people following him, reaching for him. Some seemed angry - they had every right to be - but some almost seemed sad for the man. It didn't make any sense to Scar.

The Fullmetal Alchemist, now there was a strange one.

Two people followed behind him and his brother. One was a little girl and her giant, white dog. She clung to the boys and seemed to be begging them for something. To die so young… Scar was reminded that it was a child's death that started the Ishval War.

The second was a woman had the same nose as the alchemist and she was always smiling. She looked ready to cry whenever he started to fight. And one day, on the meeting when they have a run in with Rockbell girl, the woman is gone.

It is during this meeting that, for the first time, Scar looks behind him.

None of the alchemists he'd killed haunt him.

Instead, his brother smiles at him with the same sadness of the woman.

 **Van Hohenheim**

For the most part, slaves were only those who were quirkless.

After all, without a quirk how else could they possibly contribute to society? What use were they?

And so quirkless married quirkless and families would stay slaves until genes deemed it time to supply a generation with a quirk that would allow them a chance at a different life.

Hohenheim was not one of those who made it out with a quirk. Even as an immortal being, he had always been quirkless and would be until the day he died. At least one good thing came out of it: because of Van's blood, the Dwarf in the Flask was quirkless too, and that was one thing that he was unable to use in his plot against humans.

After Hohenheim and Trisha had a kid, and Edward started climbing the walls like a giant spider, Hohenheim had cried.

Because this wall-climbing was no quirk that anybody in Trisha's family had ever had.

It meant that, even if he had never met the Dwarf in the Flask and had stayed a slave, then there was a chance that if he'd ever had a son in Xerxes, they would've had a quirk. They wouldn't have been a slave like him. They would've made it out.


End file.
